-
Mystery on the Isle of Shoals
- Closing the Case on the Smuttynose Ax Murders of 1873
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's summary
For the first time, the full story of a crime that has haunted New England since 1873. The cold-blooded ax murder of two innocent Norwegian women at their island home off the coast of New Hampshire has gripped the region since 1873, beguiling tourists, inspiring artists, and fueling conspiracy theorists. The killer, a handsome Prussian fisherman down on his luck, was quickly captured, convicted in a widely publicized trial, and hanged in an unforgettable gallows spectacle. But he never confessed and, while in prison, gained a circle of admirers whose blind faith in his innocence still casts a shadow of doubt. A fictionalized best-selling novel and a Hollywood film have further clouded the truth.
Finally a definitive "whydunnit" account of the Smuttynose Island ax murders has arrived. Popular historian J. Dennis Robinson fleshes out the facts surrounding this tragic robbery gone wrong in a captivating true crime pause-register. Robinson delves into the backstory at the rocky Isles of Shoals as an isolated centuries-old fishing village was being destroyed by a modern luxury hotel. He explores the neighboring island of Appledore where Victorian poet Celia Thaxter entertained the elite artists and writers of Boston. It was Thaxter's powerful essay about the murders in the Atlantic Monthly that shocked the American public. Robinson goes beyond the headlines of the burgeoning yellow press to explore the deeper lessons about American crime, justice, economics, and hero worship. Ten years before the Lizzie Borden ax murder trial and the fictional Sherlock Holmes, Americans met a sociopath named Louis Wagner - and many came to love him.
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- By: Steve Lehto
- Narrated by: Barry Press
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national - and even global - infamy. Here, writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother "40 whacks", where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation.
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Engaging and engrossing stories.
- By Lila Fowler on 09-14-16
By: Steve Lehto
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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
- The Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
- By: Kate Summerscale
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher.
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Tragic Murder at dawn of detective bureau
- By Kindle Customer on 08-20-14
By: Kate Summerscale
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Satan's Circus
- Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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A Death in Belmont
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Kevin Conway
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1963, with the city of Boston already terrified by a series of savage crimes known as the Boston Stranglings, a murder occurred in Belmont, just a few blocks from the house of Sebastian Junger's family, a murder that seemed to fit exactly the pattern of the Strangler. Roy Smith, a black man who had cleaned the victim's house that day, was convicted, but the terror of the Strangler continued.
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Excellent
- By Susanna on 01-13-15
By: Sebastian Junger
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Killers of the Flower Moon
- The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee, Danny Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
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An outstanding story, highly recommended
- By S. Blakely on 06-22-17
By: David Grann
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The First Family
- Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.
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The truth about the origins of the American mafia
- By J. Sovar on 01-09-13
By: Mike Dash
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A Bright and Guilty Place
- Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age
- By: Richard Rayner
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Bright and Guilty Place, an exhilarating tale of murder in L.A., Richard Rayner finds the source of the city's darkness in real-life events that unfolded in the 1920s, when the booming early years of L.A. started to shade into the Depression, and the city of sunshine revealed the hidden darkness and corruption at its heart.
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Didn't hold my interest
- By Hopesurvives on 11-03-17
By: Richard Rayner
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Death in the City of Light
- The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
- By: David King
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.
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Too many facts too little story
- By Caitanya on 09-27-11
By: David King
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No Regrets: And Other True Cases
- And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files, Book 11)
- By: Ann Rule
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A ship's pilot legendary for guiding mammoth freighters through the narrows of Puget Sound, Rolf Neslund was a proud Norwegian, a ladies' man, and a beloved resident of Washington State's idyllic Lopez Island. Virtually indestructible even into his golden years, he made electrifying headlines more than once: after a ship he was helming crashed into the soaring West Seattle Bridge, causing millions in damages; and following his inexplicable disappearance at age 80. Was he a suicide, a man broken by one costly misstep? Had he run off with a lifelong love? Or did a trail of gruesome evidence lead to the home Rolf shared with his wife, Ruth?
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Finally...worth it!
- By Luv lots on 09-04-13
By: Ann Rule
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The Assassin's Accomplice
- Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln
- By: Kate Clifford Larson
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government. A Confederate sympathizer, Surratt ran the boarding house where the conspirators met to plan Lincoln’s assassination. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant, offering a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.
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Did She or Didn't She
- By c a cornelius on 06-04-21
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The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals
- By: Michelle Morgan
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A grisly book dedicated to the crimes, perversions and outrages of Victorian England, covering high-profile offences - such as the murder of actor William Terriss, whose stabbing at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897 filled the front pages for many weeks - as well as lesser-known transgressions that scandalised the Victorian era. The tales include murders and violent crimes but also feature scandals that merely amused the Victorians.
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Doesn’t question it’s sources enough
- By Emily Stoneking on 11-27-18
By: Michelle Morgan
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The Complete Jack the Ripper
- By: Donald Rumbelow
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Laying out all the evidence in the most comprehensive summary ever written about the Ripper, this book, by a London police officer and crime authority, has subjected every theory - including those that have emerged in recent years-to the same deep scrutiny. The author also examines the mythology surrounding the case and provides some fascinating insights into the portrayal of the Ripper on stage and screen and on the printed page. More seriously, he also examines the horrifying parallel crimes of the Düsseldorf Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper.
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catch the facts if you can
- By Alexandra on 11-17-19
By: Donald Rumbelow
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Ripper
- The Secret Life of Walter Sickert
- By: Patricia Cornwell
- Narrated by: Mary Stuart Masterson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Vain and charismatic Walter Sickert made a name for himself as a painter in Victorian London. But the ghoulish nature of his art - as well as extensive evidence - points to another name, one that's left its bloody mark on the pages of history: Jack the Ripper. Cornwell has collected never-before-seen archival material - including a rare mortuary photo, personal correspondence and a will with a mysterious autopsy clause - and applied cutting-edge forensic science to open an old crime to new scrutiny.
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I thought this was a new book.
- By Stephanie on 03-01-17
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